


the highly improbable things we built

by neverwhyonlywho



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwhyonlywho/pseuds/neverwhyonlywho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor wants to start this new adventure--parenthood--off on the right foot. So, he tells the truth.<br/>Beware of fluffy mush. Rated T for shoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the highly improbable things we built

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Zandra for the read-through and the reassurance that I'm not entirely out in left field. :)

James was three days old when his father told him the truth.

Well—three and a half, maybe.

They’d been home from the hospital for a few hours only, and Rose had hardly set the baby down since. Not that the Doctor was about to stop her—she was positively glowing, still prone to outbursts of happy tears now and again—but she was also clearly exhausted and it was well past midnight before she could be persuaded to go to bed.

“He’s just so little.” Her hand cupped the small, fuzzy head on her shoulder. “I don’t want to leave him.”

“Oh, he’ll get bigger.” He kissed Rose’s forehead, tipped her chin up and kissed her properly. “If he gets into half the trouble his old dad did, you may never get a good night’s rest again. Let me take him tonight. I’ll bring him to you if he needs a feed, yeah?”

So that was how the Oncoming Storm found himself with an armful of infant—three and one-half kilograms of supple-cheeked and slightly fragrant miracle.

He had no idea what to do next.

Truth be told, that was a pretty common feeling here in Pete’s world. For once, he didn’t have to sacrifice the things he wanted for the sake of the universe. There was no enemy. There was nothing left to run from except the ordinary crises of everyday life, and he rather liked those, much to Rose’s chagrin.

No longer the savior of worlds, then—only a man. And that meant allowing himself to simply live his life, which was often much harder than it sounded. A matter of learning to stop and smell the roses, as it were. Or stop and smell Rose. (He liked that particularly. She smelled lovely, even when she was just in from gardening and covered in dirt. Maybe especially then.)

James, however, smelled like baby: sweet and a bit tangy. Milk and nappies.

That was good, too.

He wished so much for the TARDIS’ gift of translation; he hadn’t thought of it at all until the first time he held his son in his arms, when he managed a choked and reverent hello and received only a squawk in reply. There was nothing to bridge the gap now. This really was the slow path—they would have to get to know each other the linear way.

“So.” He adjusted the boy in his arms with half a mind to just walk through the hallways and _talk_ himself into his son’s good graces, but even the thought made him feel patently ridiculous. “So. Here we are, young Jamie. How should we start?”

No reply, as expected. Just a bit of squirming and looking up, following his voice, and—and _oh_ , did he have his mother’s eyes.

Rose had argued that, of course. _Your eyes are brown too, silly,_ she’d said. _You can’t possibly tell_. But he insisted. And with that thought in mind, he said as much. That seemed as good a place to start as any.

“And you’ve got your mum’s ears, too,” he continued, giving up on the walking idea and instead stretching out on the loveseat. If he folded his legs up just so, and set Jamie against them just right—ah, there, he could relax and still make eye contact. “And her toes, I think. Might be too early to call that one. But it looks like you’ve got my nose. Oh that’s a _great_ nose, isn’t it?”

Slowly, the talking got easier—once he’d warmed up to this somewhat one-sided conversation he was having, it moved naturally beyond matters of anatomy. He told his son about Tony, about Jackie and Pete, and Mickey, and at considerable length, he told him about Rose.

 _She’s really good, your mum_ , he said, thinking of dimension cannons and words scattered across time. _You’re very lucky. So am I._

"I hope you appreciate how improbable you are," he murmured then, touching the apple of one soft cheek. “The universe is a big place. It has…rules. More like suggestions, I think sometimes, but still—it’s fairly predictable on the whole. But sometimes impossible things happen, and we call them miracles. Your mum and I, we shouldn't even be here. But we are, and so here you are too. You wouldn't _believe_ what it took.”

Daleks and Cybermen and a blue box that traveled in time. In a world that had none of those things, that was going to be a difficult story to tell. Before the baby was born, he'd felt almost sure he wanted to leave all of that behind him and focus on the present—had almost committed to it—but the compulsion to tell James now was strong and unexpected. ( _He should know, shouldn’t he? What harm would it do?_ )

The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that every bit of that life was now beyond his grasp. It would all be a story—nothing more. Here, all boxes were now strictly limited to the volume of their dimensions, and none would ever be so brilliant blue as that TARDIS. Time moved in a straight line: this life was a sieve, not an hourglass.

No repeats.

It made him very careful about how he chose to spend his time.

He'd thought it unwise to spend it living in the past, or to shape his relationships in Pete's world with stories about the kind of man he used to be, the kind of man he could never be again. But lying here in the dim light of the den, alone with his son for the first time and with five tiny, perfect fingers wrapped around one of his, he strongly suspected that he was an idiot.

There was no way he could lie to that face.

Pete had warned him that having children would change him, and he'd said he knew that—he did, after all—but he'd quietly doubted that Pete's frame of reference accounted for alternate dimensions or Time Lords, much less the Bad Wolf. (He was willing to overlook the fact that he himself was only batting one out of three there, of course, not being the one dispensing the advice.)

But Pete had been right.

He brought up his other hand, let James wrap his fist around that index finger too. Little hands flexed surprisingly strong, unspeakably endearing. Sleepy little _yawp_ s were months away from being words, but they'd get there. He would have questions one day, and the response was either going to be a wall of lies or the absolute truth. Not much in between.

Truth hadn’t come so amiss here in Pete’s world. It was hard, though. Awkward, sometimes. It took strength to say _you are driving me bonkers_ or _I’m sorry Rose I let the dog out and he rolled in your petunias_ or _I love you_ or _Rose-Tyler-will-you-please-do-me-the-wife-of-being-my-honor?_

But the result was usually favorable and always worth it, so—yes. The truth, then, for his son. Nothing less.

In the end, starting the story was the hardest part. He got as far as “We are—” and stopped himself; tried again with “I used to have—” and frowned. Neither sounded right.

But in the end: “I am over nine hundred years old, James,” he said softly. “…Sort of.”

And that was how it began—haltingly, honestly, full of caveats and tangents, continuing well after his small audience had fallen back to sleep. _I’m a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. Last of my kind until one of those miracles happened, and now I’m human._

_Well—half human. Gets the job done, though._

_…Don’t tell your mum I said that_.

Explaining the TARDIS was like remembering a recently lost family member—he was startled at how much it hurt to talk about. Better to talk about his companions then, and oh, those were happy stories if he ever had any.

But with that, it all came spilling out—it had to—the Daleks, the Time War, the things he’d done. They were all connected; he couldn’t leave any of it out. Couldn’t even stop himself, throat thick with regret or disgust or some extremely human mix of the two. Impossible to make a good account for himself against this perfect little creature. Not with all that blood on his hands, not with multiple accounts of genocide. There was no redemption for that.

“I did what I thought was the right thing,” he said in the end. “I tried to do right and I hope that’s enough, because it’s got to be. And this, here, with you and your mum, it’s too good, you’re both too good—I’m always thinking I’ve got to be dreaming. I’ll wake up tomorrow and be back there, fighting. But oh, there were some good times in that TARDIS, too. Worlds saved. Planets safe in the sky because of us. I hope that counts for something, because we were _brilliant_.”

James, entirely nonplussed by this, turned a cheek toward his father’s fingertips and smacked his lips. Now, with the baby home, it was so much easier to imagine him older—the Doctor could see in his mind’s eye how he’d look sans baby cheeks, lanky with youth, all clever with his mother’s eyes and his father’s nose—and his first thought, his only thought was simple and overwhelming: _you were so, so worth it_.

It was amazing, he thought, how parenthood granted him what this human body had since taken away: the ability to see timelines stretching out before his child, to see clearly so many different versions of what was, what could be, what might be, what would be. With each passing second, a whole host of realities died by becoming impossible—but the one that remained was in James, hale and hearty, and that alone meant the future was wide open.

“I wish I could have taken you for a spin—you’d have loved it.” He pushed back visions of an older James careening loudly through TARDIS hallways; there were some daydreams best left to rest.

“Those days are over,” he said, more for his own benefit than anything else. “Over and gone. We three are now officially Earthbound little mortals living glorious mortal little lives. The human club—we’re in the bloody _human club_ now!” He made a face that, one day not too far in the future, would bring down the house and set James to howling with laughter. Tonight, though, a sleeping newborn made for a tough crowd.

“That's got to be enough, too,” he said. “That's all we've got, because there's a man walked off with our blue box, Jamie, but you know what?—” He flexed his fingers and little hands gripped them anew, holding on by reflex; such a human instinct that was, the not letting go. Such a good thing. “—I wager I got the better end of the bargain."

Not for the first time, he wondered if that bloke—the proper Time Lord—knew anything of their life in Pete's world. It would certainly be a balm and a joy to him if he knew about Jamie. But if he knew that, he'd know about the rest of it—and _that_ was enough to give his human counterpart an occasional twinge of sympathetic almost-guilt when Rose laughed herself senseless, or wore her cocktail dress and her _fuck me_ shoes and gave him that _look_ over her shoulder, or when she woke him with happy murmurs and slow, sleepy kisses.

Yes, he rather thought he got the better end of the deal.

Not that there was any point to feeling guilty. The only thing to be done, he supposed, was to do as well by Rose as he could, and make his—the proper Time Lord’s—sacrifice worth it.

This approach also happened to be pretty useful in making a good marriage. Lucky that.

****

He talked until at last James fussed again, threatening to start rooting around for his next meal. And he talked while getting up from the loveseat only reluctantly, regretting that the moment had passed. And he talked his way up the stairs, mostly in murmurs, leaving all the downstairs lights on simply because everything they had made and built deserved light and warmth to fill it.

“Out of all of my names,” he said at last outside the bedroom door, murmuring into the blonde fuzz that passed for his son’s hair, “the Oncoming Storm, or Theta Sigma, or John Smith, or the Doctor—that last one was always the most important. That’s the name that saved worlds. That’s the man who fell in love with your mum. But you, young sir— _you_ get to call me Dad. And I think I like that best of all. Good name, don’t you think?”

The bedroom was dark and warm, pleasant to enter, pleasant to come home to. Rose was fast asleep, her hair splayed everywhere—never more beautiful than when she looked a happy tousled mess, as far as he was concerned.

Navigating all of time and space didn’t leave much room for growing attached to certain places. He’d squirmed a little when they bought the house; she’d teased him about carpets and mortgages, and he’d immediately suggested an RV instead. But she’d been so taken with the place—and now he was glad of it. There was a deep sense of rightness here, a comfort.

That was something they had built together, too.

He woke Rose with a gentle touch, and even in the dark, he could see her smile in recognition. This was a ritual beginning: the first of many nights to be spent like this, lying awake together, interrupted by the life they had made. At some point the lack of sleep would likely wipe that gorgeous smile off her face, but not tonight.

Tonight, for both of them, everything was new and freely given.

****

Years later, out on their first camping trip—specifically during a new moon on a cloudless night, innumerable stars painted across the sky—James looked into a telescope for the first time and the Doctor got to see in his son the same slackjawed wonder he remembered in himself.

They grinned at each other, and that was that.

From then on, it was all spaceships and do-it-yourself rockets and glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling. It was observatories and an astronaut costume for Halloween and definitely-true bedtime stories about definitely-real aliens.

It was the Doctor calling him in for supper with a shout of “Oi, Spaceman!” out the back door.

It was how doing that didn’t hurt, but instead left him feeling the memory of Donna—the memory of all his companions—settling warm and fond in his chest.

And finally, it was how they really started: hiking through the woods up to another hilltop, looking for new planets.

“Did I ever tell you I used to have a time machine?”

Jamie looked back at him, scrunched up his nose. “No you didn’t.”

“I did too! I traded it in for your mother.”


End file.
